Welcome to the Simply Charlotte Mason podcast. I'm Sonia Schaefer. We talked last time about the

importance of helping our children learn self-knowledge and grow in self-direction. You'll remember

that Charlotte Mason used the analogy of the country of man's soul to help students understand

all that's involved in this inner life, the powers

and the perils belonging to human nature.

And she shined the spotlight on two of those governing powers in particular.

She said there are two guides to moral and intellectual self-management to offer to children,

which we may call the way of the will and the way of the reason, a philosophy of education,

introductory page 31. Today, we want to look more closely at the first of those guides,

the way of the will. Your will and your child's will

has one job in the kingdom of Mansell and one job only. The will's job is to choose. Choose what?

Well, choose between ideas. Picture this. Will stands at the gate of Man's

Soul, like a security guard. His job is to evaluate ideas as they come to the gate and to

decide if they may come in to influence our behavior and thinking, or if they will not be

allowed in.

That's his job.

He must choose between the ideas that present themselves at the gate.

Now if Will is strong, he will welcome the ideas that benefit Man's Soul and reject the ideas that are not for the best

of Man's Soul.

Remember we said last time that the goal of self-knowledge and self-direction is to become

the best version of yourself that you can possibly be.

So Will's job is to make choices that will help you achieve that goal.

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